LA Street Food Fest – 2.13.10 – Part II: Icing on the Cake

Read Part I of my adventures at the LA Street Food Fest here.

(Now for a more objective view of the 2010 LA Street Food Fest.)

Like I said in my prior post, I already considered the day a success after getting my LFC and figured everything else would be icing on the cake. In this case, the icing was deliciously sweet because I had a complete and utter BLAST at this event!

The best way to get around food festivals such as this one is to use the tactic my friends like to call “divide and conquer”: Get a group of people, everyone take a different truck, order 2-3x more than you normally would, then meet back at a specific location and divvy up the goods. Yes, you’ll still get stuck in a line but it’s only one 2-hour line rather than four 2-hour lines and you get at least twice the amount of food.

Based on our “divide and conquer” technique, I was able to taste the following trucks and try their respective goodies:
- Frysmith: kimchi fries, rajas fries, foie gras fries, chili cheese fries
- Dogzilla: karai furikake dog, yakisoba dog, dogzilla dog
- Qzilla: smoked brisket, pulled pork, ribs, Texas toast, smack and cheese
- Mama Koh’s Chicken: chicken wings
- Fishlips: tuna, eel, shrimp, yellowtail
- Buttermilk: red velvet chocolate chip pancake bites.
- Coolhaus: chocolate chip cookie, brown butter candied bacon ice cream
- Del’s Lemonade: frozen lemonade

As you can see, “divide and conquer” works pretty well (to say the least).

Although I had a great time and filled myself up on truck food, I knew pretty early on (i.e. immediately after I got my order of LFC and watched the line grow exponentially in the next 5 minutes) that there was going to be some kind of backlash on “teh internetz” about this event. With the amount of people pouring through the gate, the lines were bound to be long and most people, like me, hate waiting in lines. I also knew that quite a number of people would probably be unaccustomed to food festivals and expect to stroll in at 3PM and get food immediately (which is obviously NOT the case).

Huge crowds + long lines = disgruntled people who will complain.

I knew it was going to get even uglier when I caught news that they were closing down the general admission line due to overcapacity inside. (As someone who was on the inside, I can vouch – it was crowded already.) The next news to hit was that there were delays in the trucks because of health inspections. Both would affect the public’s view of the event and, again, would cause people to complain. (I can already see negativity bubbling in the comments on other people’s blogs and on Yelp.)

Here’s the way I see it:

Yes, it sucks that people had to wait outside for hours and still weren’t allowed in.
Yes, it sucks that people had to wait inside for hours and didn’t get very much food.
I’m not going to lie – it totally sucks.

But think about it from another perspective: This is the first food festival in LA of this size. Name another festival that comes close to reaching the number of people in attendance at the Food Fest today – What, the Tofu festival? BBQ festival? KBBQ festival? I would argue that the LA Street Food Fest is a first for this city. Considering this is its first year, that the turnout was 50-100% larger than anticipated, and given the hiccups caused by the fire marshal and the health inspector and whomever else, I would say the LA Street Food Fest did pretty damn well for itself.

Nothing works perfectly the first time around; it’s only with time and hard lessons that things get better. And I honestly believe that the next time around (and there will be another time around), the event will be bigger and better. I mean, if, in its first year, the LA Street Food Fest has already converted me into a food festival supporter (which is a big deal in and of itself), who knows what else it is capable of?

 

LA Street Food Fest – 2.13.10 – Part I: Operation LFC

I haven’t been to very many food festivals in my lifetime…Well, to tell you the truth, I’ve only been to one other. But I learned one VERY important lesson from the Korean BBQ Festival of August 2009:

If you show up late, you WILL wait in line.

Now, if you know anything about me, you’ll know – I’m an impatient girl. I absolutely abhor waiting in lines. And since food festivals equal lines and food trucks equal lines, I had pretty much decided I wasn’t going to go to the 2010 LA Street Food Festival.

…That was, until I heard about Chef Ludo and his LFC (i.e. Ludo Fried Chicken) truck. Once news broke about Ludo, I started to plan – I was going to show up at the crack of dawn (more like 45 minutes before the gates opened) and I was going to go to Ludo’s truck. If I got myself an order of LFC, I would consider the day a success and leave with no remorse. Everything else would be icing on the cake.

So, this morning, I left the house at 10AM with my $10 presale fan ticket in hand and drove the 15 minutes to DTLA. (Note: Presale is a must, especially when you don’t know how general admission is going to look. In this case, it was an extra $5 well spent.) I paid my $5 for parking (the lot was pretty empty at that time), found the side entrance (for fan ticket holders only) and waited. And waited. And waited. But once those gates opened and they checked my name off the list, I RAN. I knew that, with every step, was five people I would beat in line. Lucky for me, Krissy, Ludo’s wife, had posted a picture of Ludo’s beautiful truck on Twitter that morning. I knew EXACTLY what I was looking for: a bright red truck with the coq on it.

(The holy grail.)

I think I was one of the first dozen people in line. No real wait, the chicken was already fried and the trade-off of money for chicken was almost instantaneous.

(Operation LFC: A SUCCESS!)

I found a seat at a nearby table, watching the line quadruple before my eyes. I bit into the chicken and the aromatic flavor of the rosemary filled my mouth. Each piece of chicken was succulent and moist and absolutely perfect. I dunked the chicken, the breading, anything I could get my hands on into the tangy piquillos sauce.

An hour in and the day was already a success. It could only get better…

Read Part II of my adventures at the LA Street Food Fest here.

Max Brenner / Syrup Desserts – 12.11.09 / 1.23.10 – East vs. West Waffles

When I went to NYC in December, I had the opportunity of going to a wondrous place called “Max Brenner”. Walking through the doors was like walking through a curtain of chocolate – you were immediately greeted with the smell of it and its warm embrace. I remember loving Max Brenner’s carefree, sugar-loving establishment and wishing that something like this existed in LA.

Little did I know, there already was.

Stumbling upon Syrup Desserts was like walking into LA’s adult version of Max Brenner. Not quite Candyland, this was the more sophisticated version for those who enjoyed a good french press with their sugary delights. You may not drown in chocolate at Syrup Desserts, but you can definitely appease your sweet tooth here.

Now comes the question: Which one is better? I can’t say for certain, but I do know this: They both make a mean berry waffle.

Max Brenner

“It’s so simple. All you have to do is just really love chocolate!”

If Max Brenner were the Willy Wonka of NYC, I would be the girl who got stuck in a tube because I was drinking too much chocolate out of the river. (Yes, the short little rotund one.)

Max Brenner is just a happy-go-lucky kind of place. Open until 2AM, it’s perfect for a midnight snack or, in my case, a warm cup of hot chocolate on a cold New York night. They’ve got half a dozen varieties of hot chocolate on their menu, each made with your choice of either dark, milk or white chocolate. I personally recommend the dark Mexican hot chocolate – the spiciness in that cup kicked the cold right out of me!

After hungrily eyeing the neighboring table’s Tutti Frutti waffles for five minutes straight, I figured I should order a plate of my own. The waffles themselves were a bit dry but the mountains of strawberries compensated for it. The berries were ripe and sweet and had just a hint of citrus to punch things up a bit. The vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup were eaten separately – There was no need to load that waffle up any more than it already was, it was great as is.

 

Max Brenner
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003

Syrup Desserts

If parking downtown wasn’t such a pain, you’d find me at Syrup Desserts every weekend, fork full of waffle in one hand, coffee in the other and a lonely laptop sitting in front of me. (Hey, I only have two hands!) Any establishment that serves both LAMill and Intelligencia coffee already gets an “A” in my book. Add some of the best waffles I’ve had in recent memory and you’ve earned yourself that extra plus.

Syrup Desserts serves three types of waffles: Fancy waffles (that, for the life of me, I can’t remember what makes them so fancy), Belgian waffle and liege waffles. Again, with the help of Wikipedia, I shall define my food. Liege waffles are:

“a richer, denser, sweeter, and chewier waffle. Invented by the chef of the prince-bishop of Liège in the 18th century as an adaptation of brioche bread dough, it features chunks of pearl sugar, which caramelizes on the outside of the waffle when baked.”

In other words, it’s pure deliciousness.

(Side tangent: My food photo skills are slowly getting better! YAY!)

As mentioned, the waffles are noticeably chewier than your typical Belgian waffle but I personally like the consistency. I was surprised to find blueberries baked inside my waffle; they were a welcome addition and didn’t soggy the waffle at all.

As for the accompanying blackberry jasmine ice cream, I could eat vats of the stuff. Although my dining companion Austin thought they had overseeped the blackberry jasmine tea, I loved the bold blackberry flavor and the heavy tea aftertaste.

I can already tell Syrup Desserts is soon going to be one of my regular late night stops. The last time I was there, I noticed they have a Mexican hot chocolate on their menu too – if it’s as good as Max Brenner’s, I’ll never leave.

 

Syrup Desserts
611 S Spring St
Los Angeles, CA 90014